About Our Plans for the Museum of Play

There is a way of thinking that divides things into hardware and software. The relationship between a game console and its games is the easiest example to grasp, but the relationship between a smartphone and its apps, or between an event venue and the events held there, is also a relationship between hardware and software.

Software Gives Hardware Its Value

Many people tend to focus only on the specs of the hardware, which is visible and tangible, but we believe it is the software that determines the value of the hardware. No matter how outdated or underpowered a piece of hardware is, if there is an attractive killer app for it, many people will happily use it¹. In that sense, software might be described as what breathes life into hardware.

Moreover, an attractive killer app is one that makes full use of the hardware’s characteristics to enable new experiences. For example, the most distinctive feature of a mobile device is that it is “portable,” so we can think of software that takes advantage of this strength, being usable anytime and anywhere, as what mobile users are looking for.

Unless you are a software developer, you may rarely stop to think about the fact that a mobile device is “mobile.” But examining the characteristics of hardware from the perspective of the software, which is what shapes the user experience, can reveal a great deal.

Gamers buy a console reluctantly because there is a game they want to play. Apart from a few enthusiasts, hardly anyone buys games reluctantly because they really want the console. In the same way, few people use LINE reluctantly because they want to use an iPhone. And I doubt many people reluctantly attend whatever event is on because they want to visit the event venue.

Wanting to use the software gives us a motive to use the hardware, and the existence of software available only on certain hardware gives us a reason to choose that hardware. If the software fully draws out the strengths of the hardware, the two merge into one, and a new experience is born. In other words, to put it in extreme terms, what matters is the software, not the hardware².

Small Museums for the City of Morioka

We want to apply this “content is king” way of thinking to Morioka in the form of small museums. Put another way, we want to provide software, in the form of small museums, for the hardware that is the city of Morioka. We believe this will make the most of Morioka’s strengths as a learning environment³.

Play is such a natural and ordinary behavior that it is seen even among wild animals. In our developmental theory research, too, we treat it as self-evident that “play” is “software” essential to children’s development. Applying the insight that diverse experiences nurture the heart, we believe there is immeasurable value in collecting a wide variety of forms of play and making them available.

Kōhō Morioka, the city of Morioka’s public newsletter, lists the monthly events at public edutainment facilities. Many of the activities make us think, “This is great! I want to bring my child!” However, most of them are aimed at elementary school children and older, and the right of young children aged 0–6, and of the families raising them, to experience a wide variety of play is not taken into account⁴. Imagine how their hearts would grow if they could enjoy a rich variety of play during the period when the absorbent mind is at its most powerful⁵.

A Nature City Where All Kinds of Play Are Possible

A nature city like Morioka is the best possible environment for all kinds of play. From the area around Morioka Station, you can reach rich natural surroundings in about 10 minutes by car. A 15- to 30-minute drive takes you to even richer nature, and within a 30- to 60-minute drive, unspoiled traditional landscapes await.

Of course, Morioka is also a perfect city for walking. Stroll its streets, past rivers flowing in every direction, rows of trees lining the avenues, and Mount Iwate rising in the distance, and you feel the seasons change; that alone is enough to fill the heart. We want to pass on to the next generation not a landscape of nothing but apartment blocks and office buildings, but one with rivers where salmon swim upstream, forests where bears can live, and parks where fireflies dance on moonlit nights.

Choosing Play Based on Developmental Theory

We want our collection to center on forms of play that use the five senses, the whole body, and the hands and fingers as much as possible. Such play enables, for example, the integration of the senses, the refinement of bodily movement, and the expression of creativity. Play and discovery are two sides of the same experience. Playing leads to discovery, and discovery makes play enjoyable. We believe learning is simply another name for play, and that the two are essentially the same thing⁶.

All of our activities are based on developmental theory research. Using developmental theory as our standard, we can evaluate the learning value of any given experiential activity more rigorously than if we relied on personal experience alone. For instance, we will not collect things like the “play kitchen sets” found in the kids’ rooms of public facilities in Iwate. As far as possible, we want to collect and make available forms of play that are ① provided by nature, ② respectful of children’s intelligence, and ③ authentic. Nature Game (Joseph Cornell’s Sharing Nature) activities, for example, fit this policy. So do making fire, outdoor cooking, and woodcraft.

A Place Where Children and Adults Play Together

We want to offer plenty of activities that even adults who have no interest in children’s play can enjoy together with them. There is even a theory that law, economics, and politics originated in children’s games of make-believe⁷. From that point of view, every adult is a grown-up child absorbed in games of make-believe every day, and has more than enough playfulness.

The Museum of Play is for everyone with a playful spirit. We are steadily moving our plans forward, dreaming of the day when the Museum of Play is enjoyed as an attractive new release for the city of Morioka.

---

Footnotes

1. Super Mario Bros. dramatically boosted sales of the Famicom (the Nintendo Entertainment System), and Pokémon dramatically boosted sales of the Game Boy. As these examples show, it is well known that the arrival of an attractive killer app can greatly change how hardware is used. ↩

2. The relationship between school and learning is also one of hardware and software. Children are supposed to go to school in order to learn, yet we are approaching a strange situation in which they learn reluctantly in order to go to school. Because they are not offered software that appeals to them, their motivation for using the hardware called school may have become club activities, extracurricular lessons, or the race to pass entrance exams. That is fine for those who are satisfied, but those who are not have nowhere to go, and spend most of their time between the ages of 6 and 18 simply enduring. The inner voices of children under 18, who have no right to vote, are not reflected in a representative democracy. ↩

3. We think of the learning environment at the scale of the city. The school building as a unit was artificially defined in response to the demands of its era; we believe the city, a unit that arose naturally, is the scope by which a learning environment is naturally defined. Based on this idea, we will develop learning environments not at the scale of buildings but at the scale of the city. ↩

4. We suspect the main reasons are safety concerns and cost, but play experiences that carry some risk are essential for the healthy physical and mental development of children aged 0–6. For example, activities such as making fire and cooking outdoors are experiences big enough to turn a young child’s view of the world upside down. They may seem trivial to adults, but early childhood experiences are significant enough to stay with a person for life. We believe that experiences like these, which are hard to come by in modern households, should be made available as opportunities not only for children in privileged circumstances but for all children. We hope everyone involved will put their heads together and find ways for public edutainment facilities to offer such experiences safely and at low cost. ↩

5. The absorbent mind is one of the characteristics of young children that Maria Montessori discovered through her research on early childhood development. Through their instinct to imitate, young children absorb everything that happens in the environment where they grow up, wholesale, like a sponge. It is the core concept behind the Montessori educational principle “take care that the environment is healthy.” ↩

6. Children do not play because they are forced to; they play of their own accord. We believe that the natural way animals learn is emergent: as wild animals do in nature, play naturally becomes practice for something. ↩

7. The idea that “play is the foundation of human social, economic, and cultural life,” as discussed by the historian Johan Huizinga and the sociologist Roger Caillois. ↩